Things That Aren't Happening, for $500, Alex

Elsewhere on the 'net, someone posted a video by Garand Thumb on the "Basics Of Urban Combat Survival" etc.

It's informative, and not wrong at all, except for one thing:

If there's urban combat, and you're there, you already dun f**ked up.

If there's Urban Combat, the survival basics are simple: GTFO. Faaaaaar away.

If you can't get out, survival is going to devolve down to 

1) Got water? Forever?

2) Got metric craptons of food?

3) Got everything else you're going to need, for a decade or longer?

4) Got a place no one can find, for years, and thus not blow up or poison, where you can enjoy 1, 2, and 3?

5)Yes? ROWYBS

6) No? Settle your affairs; you're going to die. Soon.

I just saved you 28:49 of watching something that won't apply to you (at least not long enough to make it interesting). Because there's no do-over, no respawn point, no nothing.

There's alive, and there's dead.

If you're in a military force, there's always urban combat. There are field manuals on that. Urban Survival? Not so much.

Urban combat looks like Mariupol. Stalingrad. Dresden. Hiroshima. The survivors are the ones who left. Early. Or are dug in so deep, no one will ever find them for a decade, when they pop back up. (And if they're really lucky, when that happens, they aren't shot on sight, either on purpose, or by mistake.)

You want to plan for surviving short-term urban unrest for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month or so, go ahead on.

But months or more of urban combat? Fuggedaboudit.

You might as well study tsunami survival in Fukushima, or volcano survival in Pompeii.

The survivors GTFO.

This is Commander Zero Survival Rule 1: 

Big problem? Be Somewhere Else.

It's why Ol' Remus told you for years on the Old Woodpile Report "Avoid crowds."

There are definite problems in the country. But it's doable, with some effort.

Think about Sgt. Horvath's final briefing on the LC in Saving Private Ryan: "Five men is a juicy opportunity. One man is a waste of ammo."

In the city? If you ain't the Big Bad Wolf, you're just one of the piggies. And a brick house simply isn't going to cut it.

Related: I read where Russia is still attacking and bombarding Mariupol, which they claimed victory over pretty much every day for the last couple of weeks. Just like we kept attacking and bombing Rome and Paris two weeks after we liberated them in WWII, right? And like the Russians kept shelling Berlin after it fell to them. Oh wait, that never happened. So apparently, though Moscow keeps using the word "victory", it do not think it means quite what they think it means.

Have they shelled most of it into rubble? Unquestionably. It's not moving very fast, so hitting it seems to be within their skillset. Look at this post's header: that's Mariupol.

Are they victorious there? Obviously, not quite as much as they keep saying they are.

Color me shocked.

And we know Moskva won't be docking there for shore leave anytime soon, either.

Bummer.

How many more such "victories" can Russia absorb? Stay tuned.